[tied] Re: pre-Nostratic *male[:]k?xa, 'milk (vb.)'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <smykelkar@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@> wrote:
> > >
> > > At 9:30:27 PM on Sunday, February 12, 2006, mkelkar2003
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@>

wrote:

> > >
> > > >> At 6:21:19 PM on Sunday, February 12, 2006, mkelkar2003
> > > >> wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > >>> Of the 35 most basic word vocabulary PIE and OC have 23%
> > > >>> cognates. That is too many for a chance occurence.
> > >
> > > >> This is a non sequitur. It's also obviously incorrect:
> > > >> apart from a tiny handful of possible borrowings, there are
> > > >> *no* known cognates, since OC is not known to be related to
> > > >> PIE at all.
> >
> > Let us remember that the chance similarity when applying comparisons
> > by Swadesh's rules is about 8% For 35 meanings, that means an average
> > of 2.8 matches could be due to chance! 23% of 35 means 8 items

matched.

> >
> > The probability of getting 8 or more matches out of the 35 is about
> > 0.8%, which is impressive. However, that is the *best* of 5
> > comparisons. It's not too many for it be mere chance, but I'm not
> > sure how many comparisons were done to get a good score. The problem,
>
> The highest number of matches was for OC and TB 74% (Table 2) which
> means about 27 words match. I do not know if linguists consider these
> families to be genetically related.

Most do - the family is called Sino-Tibetan. There is much debate
over how its branches are related.

> You have raised a good point
> about sample size.
>
> "but I'm not
> > sure how many comparisons were done to get a good score"
>
> Chi square tests requires enough data points to fill every cell.

With

> thousands of words any language has i do not see that as a problem.

You're missing the point. Ethnologue lists about 110 language
families. If you were to do the comparison between each of the
non-Dene-Caucasian families and Proto-Indo-European, you would be
unlucky not to get such a good match.

Moreover, those 35 meanings are the ones considered most conservative.
If you compared the words for a thousand meanings, any cognates would
be drowned in the noise.

Richard.